A man who plotted to assassinate President Donald Trump at his Florida golf course in September 2024, two months before the US election, was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison.
Ryan Routh, 59, was convicted in September of trying to kill then-candidate Trump, the second attempt on the billionaire’s life in the run-up to the vote that brought him back to the White House.
According to an AFP journalist in the courtroom, Judge Aileen Cannon handed down the sentence of life plus seven years after a 90-minute hearing, saying it was “to protect the public from future crime” committed by Routh.
“The evil is in you. Not in everybody else,” she told him.
Routh was arrested on September 15, 2024 after a Secret Service agent saw the barrel of a rifle poking from the bushes on the perimeter of the West Palm Beach golf course, where Trump was playing a round ahead of the November election.
The agent opened fire and Routh, who fled in a vehicle, was arrested shortly after.
The sentencing was the culmination of a trial that featured Routh representing himself, despite no legal training.
Among his bizarre attempts to prepare for trial, Routh reportedly requested strippers and a golf putting green while in detention, and asked that jurors be selected according to their views on Gaza and Trump’s desire to purchase Greenland. The demands were rejected.
Routh’s planned attack on Trump came just two months after another assassination attempt on the Republican leader, on July 13 in Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Matthew Crooks fired several shots during a rally, one of them grazing Trump’s right ear.
The attack, in which a rally goer was killed, proved to be a turning point in Trump’s triumphant return to power. Crooks was immediately shot by security forces and his motive remains unknown.
